Earthquakes lead to boom in Nepal’s unregulated surrogacy industry

The recent earthquakes in Nepal have led to a rise in the number of young women entering the country’s unregulated surrogacy industry, aid agencies and policy researchers have reported.

The earthquakes on 25 April and 12 May were the deadliest in the Himalayan country’s history, killing 8786 people and injuring 22 303. Early indications of the ongoing effects of the disasters point to increases in human trafficking and child marriages and a rise in the number of young women signing on to carry babies for overseas couples at Kathmandu’s proliferating surrogacy clinics.

Anand Tamang, a researcher at the Nepalese non-profit research organisation Center for Research on Environment Health and Population Activities, said that there had been a spike in …